Legitimate Evangelism

“Much of contemporary evangelism is woefully deficient when it comes to confronting people with the reality of their sin. Preachers offer people happiness, joy, fulfillment, and everything positive. Present-day Christians are taught that all they have to do is find a person’s psychological needs then offer Jesus as a panacea for whatever the problem is. It is very easy to get a response, because people are looking for quick solutions to their felt needs. But if that is all we do, it is not legitimate evangelism.

“…Evangelism must take the sinner and measure him against the perfect law of God so he can see his deficiency. A gospel that deals only with human needs, only with human feelings, only with human problems, lacks the true balance. That is why churches are full of people whose lives are essentially unchanged after their supposed conversion. Most of these people, I am convinced, are unregenerate and grievously misled.

“We have no business preaching grace to people who do not understand the implications of God’s law. It is meaningless to expound on grace to someone who does not know the divine demand for righteousness. Those who do not even sense their own guilt cannot possibly comprehend God’s mercy. You cannot preach a gospel of grace to someone who has not heard that God requires obedience and punishes disobedience.“

(Quoted from The Gospel According to Jesus: What Is Authentic Faith? by John MacArthur)

What do you think? Is that a true understanding of what Jesus taught and what is going on in the U.S. church today? If not, why not?

10 Comments

Lots of very different things are going on in American Christianity today. I attend a pretty normal SBC church and some aspect of what he describes is certainly present. I get tired of the emotional manipulation and my wife and I were both pretty disgusted when a speaker at a youth event left our youngest (who has had the deepest and most amazing faith over the course of her life of anyone in our family) convinced that she hadn’t “really” been a Christian before. We talked her through that experience, but it was a sort of emotional manipulation to which she was particularly sensitive and vulnerable.

However, I’m not convinced John MacArthur would recognize the gospel or euvangelion of Christ if it slapped him in the face. (I’m sure you aren’t surprised to hear me say that.) So while his diagnosis is certainly valid for at least some of the church, his prescription is just as deadly.

Put as simply as I know how to put, salvation is union with Christ. Euvangelion does not simply mean “good news”, it describes a particular sort of good news. It’s the good news of the victory of a king over the enemy. In the Christian usage, it’s the good news of Jesus’ victory over all the powers, especially sin and death, and his ascension to power as Lord. Through his victory, we are freed from bondage to sin and death under the powers and principalities and in Jesus of Nazareth have life and the opportunity for true union or communion with him (and through him oneness also with the Father and the Spirit) and with each other.

Hmmm. Implied, but not quite stated in my comment is that “legitimate evangelism” is the proclamation of that particular euvangelion and none other. We have a number of competing purported “euvangelions” present in Christianity today. I don’t find any of the other ones, including the one MacArthur proclaims, to be “good news” at all.

Tara Meghan
on October 3, 2010 at 6:52 pm

In a large sense, that sounds right. Our call to sanctification and right-action is definitely core, and is often missing in evangelism. But I think it’s a poor choice of words to say that God actively *punishes* wrongdoing. Wrongdoing is punished by cause and effect. We remove ourselves from God, which is its own punishment, and carries with it many related forms of imposed punishment, all self-imposed.
Here’s my take on it: If my parent teaches me how to be careful, and instead I play near a ravine and fall in and break my arm, that is certainly punishment, but it’s not my parent punishing me. God (as opposed to earthly parents) certainly has the power to stop me from hurting myself, but that is not a part of the plan for us. We have free will, which involves the ability to ignore God.
I guess all I’m saying is, it’s more effective in evangelism to refer to the “natural consequence” of sin, rather than “punishment”.

Tara Meghan
on October 3, 2010 at 7:01 pm

Also, I think “requiring obedience” is also a misleading and off-putting phrase. We are formed to seek, follow, and love God…obedience comes from the desire for closeness, the understanding that God is God and I am imperfect. In evangelism, we ought not use language which suggests that He is distant and cold, when the opposite is true! “He so loved the world that he sent His only Son…”

Elizabeth
on October 3, 2010 at 10:29 pm

When I look at the life of Jesus in the gospels, it was the Pharisees, the religious, who didn’t see themselves as sinners in need of grace. But the sinners, the broken ones, Jesus never had to point out to them that they were sinners, that they were broken. It seems to me, He was confrontational to the Pharisees, but compassionate to the broken.

This quote is taken from a chapter discussing Jesus’s conversation with the rich young ruler. This young man was seeking, but he wasn’t humble – he thought he was good enough.

I see MacArthur’s book as a call to examine whether or not I am one of the proud, knows-all-the-answers, isn’t-God-Lucky-To-Have-Me Pharisee-types or if I’m truly broken and humble and ready to allow Jesus to be my Lord, not merely my Savior.

Cassandra Frear
on October 3, 2010 at 11:29 pm

I think that there are many different gifts and ministries. They all work together to witness to God in all his complexity. The body of Christ, in it’s fullness, witnesses about a relationship with God and all it’s aspects. We must be careful about criticizing one another.

“Jesus says, ‘You are the light of the world.’ I like even more what Jesus doesn’t say. He does not say, ‘One day, if you are more perfect and try really hard, you’ll be light.’ He doesn’t say ‘If you play by the rules, cross your T’s and dot your I’s, then maybe you’ll become light.’ No. He says, straight out, ‘”You are the light.’ It is the truth of who you are, waiting only for you to discover it. So, for God’s sake, don’t move. No need to contort yourself to be anything other than who you are.” — Father Gregory Boyle

Ray Rechenberg
on October 4, 2010 at 3:40 pm

This excerpt from the 20th anniversary edition of MacArthur’s book rings as true today as it did back then. I am not necessarily a ‘MacArthur”-ite but no one else in the Christian community seems to be taking this posture nor making these kinds of statements today. We sinners must be held accountable to God’s perfect standard, and His only provision for failing to reach that standard is the substitution He has provided in His beloved Son.